The Room Next Door is the first English-language feature film from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who's best known for his collaborations with Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas on movies like Volver and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Like the last film Almodóvar made with Banderas, 2019's Pain and Glory, The Room Next Door also questions how we deal with aging bodies in decline, but the latter takes the theme further.
The film stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton as Ingrid and Martha, old friends and former colleagues who reconnect after Ingrid learns from a mutual acquaintance that Martha is undergoing treatment for cancer in a nearby New York City hospital. Ingrid pays her a visit and the pair reconnect, catching up on lost time and bonding over shared memories from their days working on the same magazine. When Martha finds out that her experimental treatment hasn't worked, she refuses to undergo any further rounds and instead purchases a euthanasia pill from the dark web. She plans to take it during a trip upstate, but there's a catch – she doesn't want to die alone, and she wants Ingrid to be in the room next door while she does it.
